Smiling’s tight because it’s such a nuanced endeavor. Everyone has their own way of doing it, it doesn’t always represent the same emotion for every person, it has varying cultural implications, and according to some scientists it’s a practice that’s developed over millions of years.

This alleged origin of smiling ties back to something these scientists have dubbed the “fear grin,” wherein apes and monkeys reveal the contents of their mouths “with barely clinched teeth” to subordinate themselves to an opponent. This doesn’t make a ton of sense to me because it’s sort of like, “Nothing to see here, just the sharpest parts of my body on display to ensure you that I’m not a threat, friend!” but it sure does add another layer of complexity to this whole thing.

So what does it really mean when we smile? Are we happy or just relieved our faces aren’t being torn off? Are our smiles a plea for peace? Is life really that fucked up that we’ve evolved to endear ourselves to the thing we most fear?

These and other questions. What we can know is what we don’t know, which is anything. That at a certain point the concept of smiling is such a delicate combination of biology, intent, environment and style that to make a clear distinction as to what is and isn’t smile becomes impossible. And yet I know one thing to be true:

Simply raising your upper lip to reveal one row of teeth and gums is not a smile.

If it were a smile, which, again, it’s not, this would be the small talk equivalent of that thing that happens when you say hello to someone and they preemptively respond with “Good.” It’s a positive frown. It’s one of those car decals of Calvin peeing. This is only knowing how to make yourself Easy Mac. It’s a Chad. It’s having your favorite movie be Varsity Blues. It’s asking someone if they know who your dad is. This is literally Butthead of Beavis and Butthead’s mouth’s natural state. This is asking the photo taker if they got that new CD.

If you wanted to get someone to look like this in a picture instead of going, “Say cheese!” you’d go, “Everybody hnnnghhh!” This is the traffic equivalent of driving down the shoulder and cutting back in a mile down the road as if you’re the only genius who thought of that idea. It’s yelling “Freebird!” twice at a concert, any concert, because you think the reason no one laughed the first time is because they didn’t hear you. It’s proudly stating, “I don’t drink water,” as if that’s an honorable feat. This is responding “maybe” to Facebook invitation.

This is, yes, a power move, as it’s literally the least amount of effort you could put forth in a picture, beyond just keeping your mouth neutral, which is its own nightmare. “Here’s one row of teeth and gums,” isn’t a presentation of submission, it’s a big ol’ F.U. to you and yours.

Hey, at least it looks great, and not at all like you live at the bottom of the ocean. Keep it up, guys!

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https://medium.com/p/1c103d8a87c2Wed, 07 Dec 2016 17:01:03 GMT2016-12-07T17:01:03.407ZLet’s take a minute to expose a few very expensive mistakesImage: Kasia

Every year, various publications and companies put out so-called gift guides to supposedly help shoppers find the perfect something for family and friends. Inevitably these gift guides include some presents that are just a touch too expensive to ones that would make a hip-hop mogul blush. Now it’s entirely possible Jay-Z and Beyoncé do their own Christmas shopping, actually read these guides, and think, “Why, yes, let’s do get Solange a $1.5-mil rose gold Cobalt Valkyrie-X private plane to match her phone. She certainly deserves it. How did we never think of this before?” But the vast number of us just sigh and skip to the next item, brought low, however fleetingly, by the image of yet another wondrous magical thing that we will neither get nor give this holiday season.

These moments can accumulate into a minor depression over time if we don’t acknowledge them head-on. Ultimately these sparkly, out-of-reach gifts are truly nothing but headaches wrapped in 24-karat gold paper. And there is no better therapy for these inescapable materialistic fantasies than dreaming them through to their logical and terrible ends.

First up is the Peninsula Grand AirCruise, which I first learned about from a New York Magazine gift guide. It costs $159,000. Initially, the idea of a jet flying you around the world for a month to stay in luxurious hotels and explore international cities sounds fantastic. And then a peek at the itinerary makes you realize, no, this is going to be exhausting. You are going to be jet-lagged for a full month. You’re going to spend approximately five seconds per exotic locale. Maybe you have infinite energy and don’t mind all the radiation you’ll get from perpetual air travel for a month, but I mind. Also $159,000. Come on.

Next, the Harper’s Bazaar “Gift Guide: For the Luxe Ladies,” which reminds me of that song “400 Lux” by Lorde, except that I liked the song, and I did not like pretty much everything on this list. In fact the only gift that held any charm for me was the $1,355 Agent Provocateur slip in gold silk and black lace. But, boy, did it hold a lot of charm. Wearing such a slip, I could imagine myself waking up in a little auberge on the French Riviera, floating down the curved staircase to the breakfast nook, taking a bite out of a fresh, buttery croissant, and — no. No way anyone who wears this slip can consume carbs. In fact you know what this slip means for the woman who receives it? Regretting two months of holiday eating. Purchasing a gym membership or, worse, actually making herself go to the gym she is already a member of. And worst of all… hand washing. Ugh.

Last year, Buzzfeed provided holiday shoppers with “19 Extravagant Gifts You Totally Deserve This Year.” How did they know? I totally did deserve to, as they posted in the Parks & Recreation meme at the beginning of the list, treat myself. But with what? The item I most liked among all the Millennial debt bait was the aptly named Impossible Project Camera, a Polaroid SX-70 that then went for $408.99. The camera currently retails for $559.37 (if you want film and a case) or $399.90 (if you want a four hundred-dollar brick that’s easy to break). Everyone loves a spiffy camera, and if I could hoard cameras, I would. My house would be filled with Nikons, Polaroids, Canons, Panasonics, Fujis, and I don’t know how to make Olympus plural. Also I’d get that mirrorless Sony just to make sure the other cameras didn’t get big heads. But not only do I not have that kind of money, if I owned all the cameras I wanted, I would never use them because a.) I would never be able to choose between them all, and b.) my smartphone, bro. Unless you’re a professional photographer, which I’m pretty sure is a made-up job like professional unicorn handler or Justin Bieber, you’re the same.

I like Wired. Their wish lists often have the price points in the headline, and since they are a technology magazine, when I see something like 2014’s “20 Extravagant Gifts over $500,” I am not annoyed. Computers. Robots. Jet packs. These are expensive but practical items that every home needs, so I thought here’s the list that might damage my bank account but has every right to. But then the list had coats and art on it, and I was like, come on, Wired. What exactly do you do with a parka in a Gadget Lab, Gadget Lab Staff? Is it a smartparka? Can it tell you what the temperature is, or that your top doesn’t match your khakis and also, ew, gross, khakis? No, it’s just a regular overpriced coat. I expect this from Buzzfeed, not you, Wired.

But then! Partway through the list was a $900 Teenage Engineering Swedish speaker. Be still my heart. Finally, the gift that would win Mads Mikkelsen’s heart. I would buy anything for that guy. Sure he’s married and 18 years older than I am, but does that mean he doesn’t deserve nice things and to love me forever based entirely on me giving him said nice things? Of course not.

Alas, there’s no truth in advertising, guys, because the little red disk on top of the speaker to give it that toy bomb detonator look that appeared in Wired’s photo was subsequently missing from TE’s online store photos. Yes, a slick high-end speaker would be fantastic, but dream speakers are always cooler than real-life speakers, particularly when they don’t actually look like something Wile E. Coyote would carry around. Anyway, who needs speakers? Don’t we all have ear buds permanently attached to our skulls?

(Also, turns out Mads Mikkelsen is Danish.)

Then we come to the gift guide that you need to wear sunglasses to read, that’s how shiny it is: Neiman Marcus’s annual collection of Fantasy Gifts, a list of presents ranging from a Broadway cameo to a slumber party at the Dallas flagship store. Guess which costs more? No, really, guess. Did you guess the slumber party costs $120,000, FOUR TIMES the Waitress walk-on? A slumber party! Has anyone ever gone to an actual fun, supportive, pleasant slumber party where all of the guests were included and no one had nightmares and the sleeping bags didn’t smell like old meat? So, clearly this gift didn’t appeal to me at all, and neither did the Broadway walk-on (stage fright), but A Week of Luxe (that terrible word again) Living at Three English Estates? AKA “Downton Abbey” LARPing for a week? Sign me up. But then I remembered about how sometimes I fell asleep during “Downton Abbey” and also what British food is like and Brexit and was like, “Nah, I’ll save my $700,000 that I don’t have, thank you very much.”

At last, I am as much to blame as any of the aforementioned companies and publications, as I too have a wish list that I have compiled over the years, just hanging out on Amazon and being ridiculous. In reviewing the items I at some point have claimed to want over the last several years, I discovered an iBride Iron Joe Polar Bear Bookshelf from SwitchModern. It’s a $6,680 bookshelf. Shaped like a polar bear.

Once again, that’s a bookshelf that costs nearly $7,000 built to resemble a polar bear.

I added this to my wish list in October of 2013, apparently during some kind of mental breakdown. SwitchModern no longer sells it, but I think we can all agree that a bookshelf shaped like an endangered animal has a limited novelty lifespan and should be avoided at all costs, but most of all at the cost of $6,680. I have now deleted said bookshelf from my list and will understand if we can’t be friends anymore.

The $899 professional Geiger counter, though? I’ll let that stay. Not because I want it, but because knowing that I was crazy enough in 2011 to add that to my wish list but not crazy enough to actually buy it is the gift I truly deserve this Christmas, and it didn’t cost a thing. Take that, Buzzfeed.

Disclaimer: All gifts received by author this holiday season, including and possibly especially the ones derided above, will be happily accepted by the author and will be acknowledged with a thank you note. If she remembers.

I thought of this yesterday. Why not a one-mug microwave? Normally microwaves are large and cumbersome. The one-mug microwave would be small, fit one mug, and it wouldn’t have to be on the countertop all of the time. You could store it elsewhere when you didn’t need it. It would have two options: warm a mug that is filled to the top with liquid and warm a mug that is filled halfway. It would be very handy.

There are such things as electric mug warmers that serve this exact purpose. I’ve never used one of these. They seem odd to me. Put a mug on a plate? Ehhh… I have used a microwave, however, and I think a one-mug microwave would do just fine. Open the small door and put your mug in. Why should we allow electric mug warmers to be the only mug warming option just because it’s the option that already exists? Open your mind.

One-mug microwaves would be ideal for around 10 a.m. when your second cup of coffee has become cold. Doesn’t that sound good? Yes. They are mainly for people who don’t have a traditional microwave and dislike warming liquid on the stove because it always comes away with a burnt taste and then you also have to wash a pot. A one-mug microwave would be a luxury, yes, but only in the same way a small food processor is. It would cost around thirty dollars.

Of course, some extravagant households would have both a traditional microwave and a one-mug microwave. “I just don’t want to have to choose whether to warm my drink first or my food first when I could warm both at once,” you can imagine these people (men) saying. It’s fine. There will always be people (men) like this and maybe you can steal something from their house while you’re there.

Can you put things that aren’t mugs in a one-mug microwave? Sure — if they fit. Maybe you want to warm a cookie. You could also get creative: put your leftover Chinese food into a mug to warm it in your one-mug and then transfer it to another dish. Or just eat it out of the mug! The uses of your one-mug microwave are limited only by your imagination (and its size).

NOTE: There is a depressing trend on-line aimed toward single women that is “single servings of food you can make in a mug in the microwave.” As the inventor of the one-mug microwave I’d like to steer you away from this trend even though, on its face, it seems ideal for the one-mug microwave. It makes me sad to think about. Obviously you can do whatever you want but please don’t make a single serving of cake for yourself in a mug in the microwave.

As my final point I’d like to ask: Why are most microwaves either black or white? The one-mug microwave could come in cute colors.

My question is not a technical one, but something that kinda nags at me. Every time I join a new gym, I am inevitably approached by a fellow powerlifter (guy) in the weight room who usually says something nice, either complimenting my form or the amount of weight I’m putting up. Some have also said that it’s great to see women lifting in general. I have come to realize that women powerlifters are still a bit of a novelty in a lot of gyms.

Anyway, some of these guys pointedly asked me, “so what are you lifting for?” It made me feel like I needed to say I was training for some sort of contest — like I couldn’t enjoy lifting for lifting’s sake and its benefits. I just feel like no one asks other women, oh what are you doing yoga/barre/spin class for? And probably very few guys get asked why they lift or have their reasons for lifting questioned if they aren’t doing contest prep or something…

What’s a swole woman to say to that line of questioning? — Jennifer

Men will look at you like you have two heads for doing literally anything. You can do something as simple as make a joke and a man will get a look on his face like an infant figuring out how to poop in its own diaper and before you know it, sounds like “mmm beguiling creature” come tumbling out of their mouth and they start peppering you with questions about Comedy Things, like whether you know who Mitch Hedberg is, to find your soft spot. Men are so embarrassing and a woman can’t just fucking live in the world without someone swooping in to scrutinize her.

Many men don’t even know how to converse with you like a normal human being once you present any kind of threat, they just start quizzing you as like… a weird intimidation and/or coping tactic? They literally don’t know what to do. I’m sure plenty of men would defend this as “just asking questions,” but they are deeply lacking in self-awareness, because they don’t realize how uncomfortable they are being or how hostile they are coming off. Asking someone “what they are lifting for” is like asking “so, what are you at work for?” or “so, what are you eating for?” You obviously do these things with intention, and you may certainly have broader goals in your career, or your diet, but… this is a weird way of starting that conversation!

The reason no one quizzes women on “why” they are doing barre, yoga, or spin is because those are the things women are “supposed” to do, obviously. Everyone thinks you are out of line for doing something other than those things. Everyone is wrong about this, and the longer I’m involved with this stuff, the more I realize everyone is wrong about almost everything they think they know about strength training. And that is their problem, not yours. Strength training is actually perfect for women, in my opinion, better at helping them achieve their goals and making their daily lives better than any of that other stuff that is marketed to them, because it does all the stuff that all exercise does, plus it works quickly.

To actually answer your question, I would probably give some kind of retort to this man — “for my health, duh?” “it’s fun?” “I don’t know, what are YOU lifting for?” Per above, it’s not really an answerable question, especially if you sense he is just being a prick, so I think you should feel free to be sort of rude and dubious back at him. “I’m lifting so people will eventually be too scared to talk to me” is another one I suggest.

For the men reading this, because I know they are out there, because they will never let me forget it — but also for anyone who wants to start a conversation with anyone! — there are less weird ways of talking to someone about their hobby that doesn’t making them feel out of place. Starting conversations about exercise is a bad road to go down. People who love to talk about it will go on forever (hi) and many people who do a specific kind of lifting (powerlifting, Olympic weightlifting, bodybuilding) do tend to be goal-oriented. But it’s also like, a deeply boring subject for people who don’t care, and many aspects of it are sort of personal. It’s a hard topic to lead off with. Perhaps try instead:

“Do you come here a lot? Me too, I just got off work. I’m a [whatever], what do you do?”

I’ve also had people I’ve seen regularly at the gym for months or years comment that I’ve gotten stronger and I actually… don’t mind that. So if you insist:

“I see you here a lot. You’re so strong! Have you ever thought about competing?”

“You’re so strong! Can you spot me on this lift?”

“Your form is so good! How did you learn? You taught yourself? Wow, so smart! I wish I had the patience!”

Note these questions do not test knowledge, competency, or faith to the noble cause. “What’s your bench PR? What is your program? How long have you been lifting for? Do you have a coach? Should people squat at or below parallel? Trick question, it depends on the federation lol!” These are all dick-measuring questions. Maybe some people, mostly other men, will respond well to it, but for the rest, try to compose yourself and act like an interested party without trying to ASSESS them.

I started lifting about a week before your first column, and I don’t know if I could have kept at it with all of your clear and wonderful timely advice. I’m really struggling with how to eat. I’ve never counted calories, I’ve never planned meals, I’m a single working mother with very little time or income. All the resources I find seem to hinge on adopting some specific diet, like paleo, or assume that I have the time and income and headspace to do intense meal planning and prep. Can you recommend some good basics, or a meal planning resource that is easy to use? Is there a Starting Strength for eating right? — Sarah

Bleh, don’t do paleo. But yes, the food part of lifting is tough. You want to eat enough calories first and foremost in order to build muscle, but you also want to hit your macros right — at the very least, you want make sure you’re getting a gram of protein per pound of bodyweight and not overdoing it too much on either carbs or fat. And then, you have to figure out how the foods you will eat fit into this picture.

This can become a fun puzzle, especially when you are bulking and have an embarrassment of carbs to eat every day, and you are like, hmm, ten Oreos, don’t mind if I do. But if you are new to it, it can be a nightmare of riddles. What has carbs but no fiber? What has fat, but only unsaturated fat? What has only protein and carbs, but no fat? Eventually you realize you spend most of your time eating the same, like, 20 foods, and you will also develop a set of of go-to foods that you know you like to eat and can fill specific macro gaps — some edamame here, a tin of smoked trout there, a cup of yogurt here, a spoon of peanut butter there.

In the meantime, there is a cool site called Eat This Much where you can plug in your desired calories and macro ratios and how many meals you want to consume them in, and it will spit out a meal plan. This takes a lot of the legwork out of figuring out how everything fits together and gives you balanced meals, so you aren’t for instance, trying to cram 100g of protein in at the end of the day. Sometimes it will do kind of weird things like tell you to eat two cups of cottage cheese at once, but you can reshuffle the meals easily.

Other than that, try spending some time playing around in MyFitnessPal or the food-tracking app of your choice and search foods you eat; use the next calendar day to try putting meals together yourself by searching the things you eat and seeing what there is left to fill in, or what you can change around or swap out.

Like I said, tracking and organizing meals can feel daunting at first, but it’s something you get the hang of. The results you get from Eating Right, even on a day-to-day basis, can feel extremely good! Especially when you make gains. And if you’re worried about feeling trapped in a cycle of scrutinizing every gram and calorie — it should definitely not be a fixation, but also, it’s not something you have to be totally rigid about. Once you get a sense of what you eat, you can stop tracking for a while, and that’s fine. If you get to a point where you feel tired all the time, or you’re gaining or losing weight when you don’t want to be, you might pick it up again. I tend to undereat even when I’m trying to maintain weight, so tracking can be just as important for making sure you’re eating enough. A day or a week or even a month of eating freely is not going to be your undoing, ultimately, and like everything else about fitness, it shouldn’t be a prison.

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https://medium.com/p/6a84f61e786cTue, 06 Dec 2016 18:16:42 GMT2016-12-06T20:05:27.526ZI know it sounds like it’s going to be bad and in some ways it is but I promise you that it is also good (if you like Fiona Apple; I’m not sure if you do).Image: Michael Stillwell

Fiona Apple has a Christmas song already, remember? Oh. I’m just noticing this now: she has more than one. She has two! The one I was thinking of was this one, “Frosty the Snowman”:

She also does a live cover of “Please Come Home for Christmas.” Here’s a recording of that, at the beginning of which she says “Happy Hanukkah” because she “always feels so weird about just, like, Christmas.” Haha. I love her!

Today, coming from Pitchfork, she released a new Christmas song. I’ll ask you not to judge it too harshly from the title. I admit that I clicked on the link to the Pitchfork post because I read the title and thought “I hate this” and I was curious to see how much I was going to hate it. I know you’re going to read the title and think “I hate this,” and that’s fine. We can’t help how we feel about anything, let alone song titles. It’s called “Trump’s Nuts Roasting on an Open Fire.” And it sounds beautiful!

Trump’s nuts roasting on an open fireas he keeps nipping at his foes.You’ll cry creepy uncle every time he arrives,for he keeps clawing at your clothes.Everybody knows some money and entitlementcan help to make the season white.Mothers of color with their kids out of sightwill find it hard to sleep at night.

They know that Trump is on his way.he’s got black boys in hoodies locked up on his sleigh.And every working man is going to crywhen they learn that letch don’t care how you live or if you die.

So I’m offering this simple phraseto kids from 1 to 92.Although it’s been said many times, many waysMerry Christmas to youMerry Christmas, Merry ChristmasDonald Trump, fuck you!

I thought having a funeral service for my abortion would be total bummer. I mean, there I was with my unwanted pregnancy, and a fairly simple medical procedure to solve my problem. Yes, it would have been great to have just gotten my abortion and been on my merry way. Yes, the fetus was the size of a pea and I did not end a life so much as prevent one from coming into being. Yes, I was actually doing so many people — the person who got me pregnant, my parents, the planet, oh, and me (whatever lol) — a big fat fucking favor. All I wanted to do was have two whiskey sours and watch season four of “Last Tango In Halifax,” but instead I had to plan a funeral for my fetus.

Did I want to scream and cry and punch things? You bet I did! But I am not a victim. I was determined to make this the best damn fetus funeral ever.

First off, I had to get a tiny coffin. It had to be about the size of my thumbnail. It had to have some gravitas but I also wanted it to be, I don’t know, something that I enjoyed as an object because as I said, I didn’t want to just go through the motions, and just be like, “Poor me, the state of Texas is forcing me (and the other 75,000 women who get abortions in Texas every year) to have a funeral for my fetus, now I have an excuse to fail!”

So I called every single maker of artisanal dollhouse furniture I could find. They were all super nice, but in the end agreed it was logistically impossible to make a coffin that small. So I put up a Facebook status: “Hive mind! Ideas for inexpensive, cool fetus coffin hacks?” My friend Shelley suggested a walnut shell, which I thought was so genius. But it was too big. So I used a pistachio shell. Everyone agreed it was adorable but also low-key — exactly the vibe I was going for.

Deciding what to do for the eulogy was tough. I asked the dude who got me pregnant if he wanted to say anything and he was like, “Isn’t that your job, you’re the one who got pregnant,” and I said, “You’re an idiot, I can’t believe I had sex with you 1.4 times,” and he said, “You’re insane, why are you having a funeral for a fetus?” and I said, “Because we live in Texas and it’s a law,” and he said, “That’s ridiculous, no one would ever make someone have a funeral for a fetus, women are so paranoid.” Anyway, this was a miserable conversation but the good thing was I had the foresight to record it and I played it in lieu of a eulogy. It worked out so perfect, because once the recording ended, people looked at each other and were like, “Ok, yeah, we get it, that’s enough.”

As we filed out, my mom whispered to me, “Did you realize there are tons of people here but not one single fetus?” and I looked around and realized how lucky the fetus was that all these people had showed up for me, because if they hadn’t, there would have been literally no one here, and that would have been depressing.

I kept it simple for afterward — I just heated up some Parker House rolls and made a ham and set out some mustard and paper plates. Still, everyone raved about it. I also got some beer and wine. I got bottled beer instead of canned, because although no one would ever consider shotgunning a beer at a person’s funeral, I have some friends from college who might think it was ok to do it at a fetus funeral and I figured, hey — better to remove all temptation! I ended up not getting flowers at all. I was going to, but while I was showing my funeral planner a couple options, she looked at me very seriously and was like, “What do you think the fetus would have wanted?”

I looked back at her and said “Uh, I think it wouldn’t give a shit if we had flowers because six-week old fetuses have not yet developed flower preferences.” She said, “I think it’s amazing that you have the strength to go with your gut even after going through this really hard thing.” And I was like “By ‘really hard thing’ do you mean paying five hundred dollars for something that should have been free and then having to turn around and buy a fucking ham?”

I can’t lie — the funeral was sheer torture for me. But I think everyone else had a pretty good time, and when it comes to hostessing, that’s how I measure success.

Funeral For A Fetus was originally published in The Hairpin on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

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https://medium.com/p/dfd8527f4137Mon, 05 Dec 2016 17:56:01 GMT2016-12-05T17:56:01.951ZThe band is on a break, but the boys aren’t.Photo: @jamie_bassaline

One Direction last performed together on a Sunday night, Dec. 13th, 2015, on the season finale of the British iteration of “The X Factor.” They sang a single from their fifth album, accepted accolades from Simon Cowell and others, and then vanished into the night to begin a hiatus with no end-date. Between them, in the months since they last took the stage, they have officially announced very little — two solo record deals, the birth of a child, the founding of a golf management company. But each week they are out in the world, doing things, going places. This is what we know.

On Tuesday, Niall Horan had a good day in the studio. On Thursday, he responded to a tweet from Charlie Puth offering to buy him a beer by saying, “I’m currently off the beer coz I’ve got terrible acid reflux hahaha. But I appreciate the offer. Let’s have a water hahaha.” He also watched some golf that day, despite technical difficulties. On Friday, he performed his single at Jingle Balls in LA and San Jose. His hair is basically all brown now save some light highlights. He’s growing a beard.

On Monday, Liam Payneattended the London premiere of I Am Bolt, the new film about Usain Bolt by Fulwell 73, the company that has produced most of One Direction’s music videos. He was the only member of the band to attend. On Tuesday, he attended a charity event with girlfriend Cheryl Ann Cole Tweedy Fernandez-Versini (Payne?), who is definitely pregnant. No one has said anything, but …. come on. Actually that’s not true, Payne’s sister Ruth said this on Twitter: “Bump or no bump,announced or not,it’s completely up to my brother and cheryl what parts of there private lives they choose to share and when.” I agree, Ruth! But still, would be nice to know. On Thursday, taken with the Christmas spirit while looking at some Christmas lights in London and also cold, he implored his Instagram followers, who number 11.9 million and are located all over the world, to wrap up. On Sunday, he followed Cole Tweedy Fernandez-Versini (Payne?) on Instagram. She is his first and only follow.

On Thursday, Harry Styles got coffee in LA. He wore a Green Bay Packers beanie, a Randy’s Donuts hoodie, Adidas sliders, and white athletic socks. On Friday, he dined out in Malibu. He wore a grey hoodie and a white jacket. On Saturday, he arrived in London, wearing the same hoodie and jacket.

Notable Adjacent News

While tuning his guitar at the Jingle Ball in Los Angeles on Friday, Justin Bieber gave Niall Horan a shout out. (“Shout out to the other artists,” he said. “Shout out to Niall.”)

Gemma Styles, sister of Harry Styles, posted a sponsored Instagram post for a snacks-by-mail service that donates a portion of its proceeds to charity. In the pic, she is digging into a bag of pretzel crisps, a fine choice. On Saturday, she turned 26.

Nick Grimshaw, Radio 1 Breakfast Show DJ and friend of the band, bought his dogs, Pig and Stinky Blob, a new dog bed.

You’re never going to have a life to live again. Everything is terrible and everyone feels bad all of the time. Donald Trump is president-elect. It starts getting dark outside at 3:30 p.m. If you sort of want to get a Christmas tree you should just get one.

“I don’t know. My apartment is small. It’s going to be a mess to clean up. I’ll have to water it.” That’s you, which is why it’s in italics. Here’s me in normal typeface: “These are bad reasons to not get a Christmas tree if you have any desire to get a Christmas tree.”

It’s OK that your apartment is small; you can make room and get the size of tree that fits. It is going to be a mess to clean up, that’s true, but you’ll manage. You will have to water it, that’s true, but you’ll manage. And then you’ll have a Christmas tree.

“But I don’t want a Christmas tree.” Oh. This post isn’t for you, then. Continue reading only if you’re on the fence about getting a Christmas tree.

A Christmas tree makes your apartment smell like a Christmas tree. You put lights on it. You put ornaments on it. You put whatever you want on it. You listen to holiday music while you put the things on it and you drink hot chocolate. “By myself?” Yes, it’s OK if you’re by yourself. “With someone else, or other people?” That’s good too.

In the morning, you plug in your Christmas tree lights. You make coffee and you sit on the couch and you look at the tree, all lit up, and drink your coffee. It’s quiet. It brings you a unique December morning joy, morning joy to which you don’t have access during any other month of the year. (Give or take.) You breathe in the scent.

Looking at your computer and knowing that you will look at your computer almost every day for the rest of your life is a little more tolerable near a lighted tree, this is a promise.

When you come home from being outside of your apartment, you smell the tree very much. You come in from the cold, you take off your coat, you smell the tree, and then you plug in the tree lights. The lights on the tree light up the dark night more than just your normal lights do. They bring you cheer. And the ornaments!

The ornaments. From your travels, from your childhood, from Etsy. You have your favorites but you love them all except for the “filler” ornaments that you got from the dollar store that you think are just fine. The filler ornaments have their role and it’s a very important one; the other ornaments are nice to them, there is no animosity here. We’re all friends.

There are a lot of reasons to not get a Christmas tree if you only sort of want one. You gotta transport it. You gotta clean up after it. Sometimes you bring it in and there are weird new bugs hiding in there and they’re bugs you’ve never even seen before and they’re very scary. Yes. Getting a tree is a pain. But it’s only a pain for a brief period of time at the beginning and then again at the end. If you avoided things that were painful at the beginning and the end you would avoid everything, excluding only the things that are painful for the whole time.

There are only bad things to come after tree time is over. It is important that you make the most of tree time.